It's Such a Beautiful Day (2012)

I've just finished this film for the first time and struggle to find the words to describe it. It is funny in that dark Hertzfeldt way. But it is so much more than that. It ties the humor of humanity in with the pain of being human. It's a Beautiful Day tells, mostly in present tense, the story of Bill. The entire time we are laughing at Bill's misfortunes, we empathize, he is becoming a part of us. We soon find we are laughing at ourselves and our world.

The story starts like many of Hertzfeldt's shorter films. The telling of this story, at first, comes off kind of clumsy, as if its creator struggled with such a large canvas on which to tell it. But the pieces are violently shoved together in a moment that makes Hertzfeldt's genius come to light. This moment which gives a greater sense of the story is followed by several more that cut me to the core. In my opinion, this story is agonizingly beautiful and is rich with that transparent honestly only Hertfeldt has seemed to be able to accomplish via film/animation.

Fmovies: Existential spewing that has a lot of great ideas, but it's trying so hard to make you have a revelation that it doesn't realize how unoriginal some of its ideas are. We're just brains floating around. We don't live because we're afraid to die. There's hidden beauty in the world. All of these things are nice ideas but none of them are things I haven't thought of before. The movie wants to tackle everything in huge, broad strokes, and doesn't dig into any of these ideas enough to wow me.

It's a little like a older teen who is telling a group of little kids some profound existential whatever he read on the internet about how people are specks and nothing matters and the 8 year olds are eating it up because it's profound. There's not really a ton of wisdom here.

Other films like The Tree of Life and American Beauty tackle similar ideas, but they do them with much more detail and I can relate to them on not just vast levels, but personal ones. Sure this movie can be a personal experience for people, but is this movie ACTUALLY changing your life?

It's kind of like a politician who rallies up crowds because they know exactly the problems in the country and what needs to be done, but doesn't actually say how they're going to do it.

I don't believe life works with the broad strokes the movie paints it with. It approaches life with a birds eye view. Psychological problems or true love, for example, are hardly on this film's mind, yet they are more relevant to actual life, not this fantasized version of life where people are directionless pawns on a chessboard, slaves to mundanity.

I liked this movie a lot because it's a good motivator for living life to its fullest and trying to appreciate beauty, but I don't think that it's actually THAT wise or enlightening, and it's not going to make me go outside and cry at a flower. I enjoyed it's animation style a lot and experimental nature and it blends many of its ideas together very well. Problem is, it talks big and lacks detail.

In a film industry there animated movies are getting more and more advanced, this extreme surprise shows up on Netflix. What a beautiful film this is.

Don Hertzfeldt, a director I had never heard of until this day tells the story of a man named Bill, who struggles to put together his shattered psyche. All this is done with very simple, but heartwarming drawings mixed with some live action moments.

Like Mary and Max (2009), this animated feature relies heavily on the narrator, who's voice is the only one you hear. We listen to simple stories about life itself, with some very dark humor intended. You'll laugh, you'll cry, but most of all you'll only spend 62 minutes of your life on something that was quite clearly worth it...

It's Such a Beautiful Day fmovies. Some films don't leave you for days after you watched them. You actually feel like they will always be within you for your whole life, and they kind of do. This has been one of those films for me. I started watching it with no idea what is was about or what to expect and so it took me to a lovely, passionate, exceptional journey.

It's one of these few films that actually makes you think after the last scene, which was by the way a remarkable one to end the film with.

It speaks to the heart, the mind and the soul in such a simple, beautiful way. I so loved how it's narrated and how the ideas are displayed. It deserves to be recognized and seen not once, but many times.

From his beginnings as the animator of absurdist comedic shorts like "Rejected" and "Billy's Balloon", Don Hertzfeldt's career has always been promising and he has now become one of the finest filmmakers working today, a mature mastermind with a sense of humor that somehow manages to create stunning works of art using stick figures.

"It's Such a Beautiful Day" is a tragicomic combination of fantasy and reality, portraying the life and death of a seemingly normal man named Bill, a relatable extension of ourselves who lives a confusing yet mundane life that seems to have been wasted by year after year of nothing. Featuring a deadpan and often hilarious narration by Hertzfeldt himself, Bill's psychological and physical collapse is portrayed through the unique usage of flashbacks, dream sequences, absurdist gags, surrealist science fiction imagery, etc. All of these fragments of memories and crises and sad moments and happy moments and funny moments and stream of consciousness style musings on existentialist concepts of death and love and life all culminate to form something inexplicably beautiful. This is the story of a fragile man taking place over the course of his most fragile days as life seems to vanish in his socially awkward grasp. Of course, this is not a conventionally sad work, although it IS extremely tragic and heartbreaking throughout, for Hertzfeldt's often dark and occasionally even slightly juvenile and slyly bawdy sense of humor shines through even the most melancholic of moments.

The result of this brilliant philosophical tale is a work of both intellectual and emotional mastery crafted by an underrated and unbelievably talented artist whose works can combine elements of comedy and tragedy and poetry using bland, almost poorly drawn stick figures. This filmmaker and this films are both movie miracles and prove that even in this modern age of repetitive corporate media cinema is not dead and can still be excellent and original!

When I sat down to watch this, I had never heard of Don Hertzfeldt, the genius behind "It's Such a Beautiful Day." Since then, I've watched every single film he has made at least three times. This film changed the way I look at art; film, music and literal art, in the form of paintings. It is truly incredible. Hertzfeldt's animation style in one of the best in the industry, and has now become my favourite.

The story that is told in the series of shorts will make you laugh, cry and consider why you are even living. The way that the simple animation style is composited on screen is unique, and also works seeing as it is told from Bill's perspective. The main character, Bill, is a lonely, confused stickman, who suffers from depression and a mental disorder. The things he dreams up or the hallucinations he sees show Hertzfeldt's absurd humour, which will confuse you and also make you laugh. The questions that he asks will stay in your head for a very long time.

The fact that this masterpiece was produced entirely one person with no help from computers makes the film stand out even more.

I don't know whether I'll ever watch a film the same again.